Longmont City Council
On Tuesday, June 17:
- After multiple residents took to the podium asking council to table an ordinance that would criminalize sitting and lying down on public property along roadways throughout the city — a legislative approach criticized for unfairly targeting the unhoused population — council responded by moving the vote back to August.
Alice Sueltenfuss, executive director of one of the city’s largest homelessness service providers, HOPE Longmont, said the organization was never approached to weigh in on the legislation. “That’s a huge problem for me,” she said during the public hearing.
“There’s a lot of nonprofits here tonight that would be amazing problem solvers for this issue if they had only been asked about it.”
The ordinance would make it illegal to sit or lie down from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily and 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays in the city’s commercial districts, including 17th Avenue, 21st Avenue, Hover, Main Street, Downtown, Southwest and Ute Highway.
According to Public Safety Chief Zach Ardis, the law comes in response to concerns raised by the business community. Ardis confirmed that neither HOPE nor OUR Center were consulted because “this ordinance applies to everyone within this city, not just the unhoused.”
Sueltenfuss told Boulder Weekly in an email she did not hear about the ordinance until June 3, a full day after council gave a preliminary vote on the law.
“I tried to learn more in an outreach meeting that I made a point to go to,” she said, but the only mention of the ordinance was that it pertained to business districts. “Tonight I learned the point of the ordinance but, come on, it is about homeless individuals.”
In the end, council voted to table the ordinance until its second regular session in August to discuss alternatives with the various service providers throughout the city.
- Voted to refer yet another attempt to add a plot of land along Quail Road to the city for potential development.
After a discussion that spanned nearly two entire council meetings earlier this year regarding a plan to annex roughly 18 acres of unincorporated Boulder County land to make way for more than 300 rental units, developers unexpectedly withdrew the application during council’s Feb. 4 meeting. While council had yet to vote on annexation, several members voiced concerns over the lack of affordable, for-sale homes.
This time, the developers have returned with a new application — with a formal commitment to designate at least 15% of the 310 units as for-sale, deed-restricted affordable housing in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
Council was still split on the decision, voting 4-3 in favor of referring the request into the annexation referral process. Members again voiced concerns about the development plan focusing on apartments.
“If we know without a shadow of a doubt that we will only have 47 for-sale homes,” Longmont city council member Shiquita Yarborough said, “and there's no possibility of any more for-sale homes on that property, then why are we referring it?”
The city estimates the application process — generally mired by multiple rounds of input from city utility and service providers, public comment periods and Planning and Zoning Commission review — could take anywhere between 6-9 months. At the end of the process, the annexation application will return to council to be voted on again.